How to audit a website yourself: tools and services

For site owners and newbies

Technical and SEO-audit of the site are mandatory items of the promotion plan. When working with a resource, the sequence is the same as in medicine: first diagnosis, then treatment. It is necessary to check the technical condition, usability, optimization and only then develop a further strategy.

For a complex complex audit of a truly large-scale project, it is better to involve independent experts. But sometimes you can do without them. For example, when it is necessary to evaluate individual optimization parameters or the technical condition of the site. Paid and free tools and services will help with this, which even a beginner can figure out.

At what stage should you conduct an audit?

An audit will come in handy at any stage of a project’s development. If the site is new, you need to make sure that the usability and the technical part are working correctly and nothing interferes with the user when searching for the information they need. It is believed that even an ideal technical condition does not in itself promote the site. But the presence of even seemingly insignificant errors can hinder ranking and slow down development.

In the case of a mature project that has already earned a reputation and high positions in search results, regular diagnostics will help monitor the status, quickly identify problems and solve them. For example, it is important to notice “broken” links and incorrectly used tag templates in time.

If the site is stalled, traffic is not growing or is growing too slowly, documents are ranked lower than those of competitors – an audit is required. You need to check the optimization (internal and external), the technical part and other parameters. Moreover, it is desirable to do this quickly, simply, in order to identify the cause as soon as possible for its subsequent elimination.

What to check?

Comprehensive analysis can include hundreds of items – from the age of the domain to checking texts for spelling errors. The main areas of audit are:

technical specifications;
link profile;
structure;
the quality of the content and its relevance.

There is usually no point in checking “all at once.” If the overwhelming majority of queries “sagged” in the SERP, most likely, the matter is not in the quality of the optimization of an individual page. It is highly likely that the reason is global. For example, a decrease in the speed of loading documents.

However, it is not enough to obtain confirmation of the hypothesis. It is important to immediately exclude the possibility of other technical problems that could lead to duplicate tags, deactivation or incorrect display of pages.

How to check the site yourself?

It is convenient to carry out diagnostics using checklists, if you need to check the status of the site quickly and make sure that everything is in order. Here is an example of such a checklist with a list of technical parameters that are critical for promotion:

indexing of pages in search engines (see Webmaster and Google Search Console);
Broken links;
are Title and H1 unique within the site, are there any duplicates;
non-unique blocks of text within the site (they negatively affect the ranking);
the presence and correctness of the 404 error page;
time of loading documents.

This is the main pool of factors to check first.

Automated audits

For a quick check of sites, it is convenient to use additional online tools. We have selected several popular online services that will help an SEO specialist to automate work and significantly speed it up.

Pixel Tools

Pixel Tools has more than 50 tools that check the site by dozens of parameters. Internal optimization (meta tags, structure, URL), external optimization, and the likelihood of Yandex filters are assessed. You can check the positions of both your site and a competitor for free, sorting requests and exporting to a CSV file.

A useful quick tool is to check indexation, age and date of the cache in Yandex. It can be used to evaluate not only your project, but also competitors’ pages.

A comprehensive service, the project management module, conducts a deep online audit of the site, analyzes the technical part and SEO parameters, monitors the dynamics of positions, finds technical errors, and allows you to receive up-to-date recommendations.

pros: many free quick audits, user-friendly interface, good technical support.

Minuses: a significant part of the tools are available only on PRO-tariffs.

Megaindex

Megaindex is one of the reputable express audit services.

Megaindex has over 30 instruments. For example:

Analysis of site visibility in search engines. It evaluates traffic, the number of search queries in the TOP Yandex and Google, shows queries and positions for them (in the free version up to the 5th line, in the paid version – all queries).
External links. Determines referring domains, links, anchors, calculates TRUST RANK and DOMAIN RANK.
SEO text analysis. Analyzes the texts of top pages for a specific query: the frequency of the keyword in the text, the percentage of occurrences in anchors and Title.
Snippet analysis. The tool shows a snippet, a request, the number of effective impressions for this request and a position.

pros: many useful unique tools, including free ones, the test results are quite accurate, flexible tariff plans.

Minuses: restrictions on the free plan – only the first five results (links / URLs / positions, etc.).

WebsiteReport

SiteReport is a convenient service for conducting SEO audits. It analyzes websites by more than 200 parameters – technical and SEO.

The service checks:

download speed;
server response codes;
the depth of nesting of pages;
robots.txt file;
links and their indexing;
tags and meta tags;
images, CSS and Javascript files;
duplicate pages;
keyword density;
requests to TOP-10 and TOP-50, their dynamics for the year and other parameters.

pros: up to 25 sites can be checked for free, convenient reports, there are useful tools for working with content.

Minuses: judging by the reviews, the audit results do not always coincide with reality, the cost of a full technical audit for a large site is quite high.

SeoLik

SeoLik has over 100 multidirectional tools. For example, you can determine the age of the domain or the affiliation of sites, analyze links from social networks, check if there are any pages in the register of prohibited RKN resources.

In SeoLik, you can conduct a free site audit. The tool evaluates page optimization for a specific request and makes recommendations. But do not take them as dogma. Many of the tips were relevant a few years ago, but not now. For example, the tool recommends highlighting keywords in the text in bold, using them in the exact entry not only in Title, but also in H1, Description and alt images. After the Baden-Baden filter was released in Yandex, such actions are dangerous.

In the paid version, the service checks the visibility history in Yandex and Google, analyzes competitors, and removes positions up to the TOP-20. There is a convenient report generator where you can set your logo and copyrights.

pros: quite a few tools, including the free version, convenient functionality.

Minuses: the service gives out irrelevant recommendations from SEO 2015, the free functionality is limited.

PR-CY

PR-CY analyzes the site according to the main indicators in one tab: it determines the number of indexed pages, ICS, Yandex signs, the presence of a malicious virus code, social activity (groups in social networks) and other parameters.

You can check traffic to someone else’s site based on information from the Alexa service. But the data is not particularly accurate, usually the service shows less traffic than it actually does. The service analyzes links (it detects internal links correctly, external “sees” not always).

The automatic audit service offers to find errors for free. Determines occurrences of keys in text and tags, URL length and other parameters. And it gives SEO recommendations, unfortunately, as outdated as in SeoLik.

pros: automatic tools are free, there is a convenient tab with a comprehensive analysis of the project, there are services that competitors do not have.

Minuses: not all tools are accurate, free version is very limited, frequent reminders to buy a paid account.

Among the many tools for SEO specialists, it is important to find “their own”, which are sharpened for specific tasks. It is even more important to use it regularly in order to keep your finger on the pulse and see any changes on the project in time, both negative and positive. This will greatly simplify your work and always stay in the TOP.

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